The difficulty with linguistic relativity or the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis, or the
idea of linguistic relativity, is trying to prove that language influences
thought.
One way that researchers have tried to show Whorf
and Sapir’s observations is through examining how
people in different places name and understand colors.
Everyone sees colors
biologically the same way
(except those with color
blindness) so the subject
under discussion can be
studied by objective
scientific methods.
Researchers can compare
and reveal different views
that are linked to different
descriptions of the same
reality.
Some anthropologists have worked to identify differences in perception (influenced by
language) by looking at how various languages and culture groups categorize color.
The idea is that all (or most) humans see color in the same ways. The premise is that
biologically we all see the same hues of color (except people who are color blind). If
people learn to perceive color meanings and associations differently because their
languages create diverse color categories, then this phenomenon may be proof of
linguistic relativity.
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John A. Lucy and others
Subjects asked to identify colors mixed in with
other colors.
More codable colors are recognized and
remembered more in nonlinguistic tasks.
For example, linguistic anthropologists experimented with people who speak English.
They showed individuals (subjects) five color chips and asked them to memorize the
colors. Then the researchers mixed those five chips with several other color chips spread
out on a table. The researchers asked the subjects to pick out the five chips they were
given initially. It turned out that if the subject had a name for a color chip, one that they
used regularly in their daily lives, they were more likely to identify that chip from among
the rest. If a chip color name was unfamiliar to the subject, they had a harder time
finding that chip among the others.
The conclusion was that if someone has a clear word for a thing or phenomenon, they
are more likely to be able to identify and differentiate that thing or phenomenon from
other things or phenomena.
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H. A. Gleason compared how English
speakers describe the color spectrum with
speakers of Bassa – spoken in Liberia, and
by speakers of Shona, spoken in Rhodesia.
Sunlight refracting
through a prism:
• English speakers
identified by name
six colors at least,
purple, blue, green,
yellow, orange, and
red.
In another experiment researchers asked speakers of different languages to identify the
colors refracting from a prism. English speakers usually identified by name about six
colors (see above).
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Shona speakers have only three
names for the colors of the
spectrum.
• They group orange, red, and
purple under one name.
• They group blue and green blue
under one of their other color
terms.
• Their third word identifies yellow
and the yellower hues of green.
Bassa speakers have
two words for the
hues of the spectrum.
• Dark cool
• Light warm
Thomas Seabek and Marcel Danesi:
Speakers of different languages are
predisposed to see different color
categories through the repertoire of
specific signifiers (words) they have
learned,
People, of course, can learn other
perceptions when they learn new
languages and new color categories.
In comparison, Shona speakers identified by name three colors. Their language puts
colors into only three color categories and those categories influence how people
identify colors. Bassa speakers have two words for hues of the spectrum and they
identified the colors in the prism based on their color categories.
In English and in our ‘mainstream’ culture, we are likely to only use a few words for rice,
perhaps brown, white, short grained, long grained, wild rice, basmati rice, etc. The
Hanunoo people of the Philippine Islands regularly discuss rice with about 92 terms. The
fact that they have 92 terms to describe various forms of rice means that they can
easily ‘see’ and describe differences between rice types, simply because they have
words for those differences. The idea is that when a language lacks a term for a
phenomenon, its speakers are less likely to ‘see’ the phenomenon because they have
no term or word for it.
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Hanunoo people of the Philippine Islands
have different names for 92 varieties of rice.
• Language is essentially a
code that people use both to
think and to communicate.
• For the Hanunoo, who have
names for 92 varieties of rice,
any one of these varieties is
highly codable in the array of
91 other varieties.
• They have a word for it and
so can transmit it efficiently
and presumably recognize it
easily.
People’s minds are drawn to the differences between rice because they have
words to distinguish those differences.
Categorization is a big issue
• We behave
according to
things/ideas
depending on
what categories
they are in.
• Debate about
gay marriage is
an example.
What is the category of marriage?
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Food categories
Your thought behavior
is likely influenced
when someone tells
you a food is low in
calories.
Your thought behavior
is likely influenced
when someone tells
you a food is high in
calories.
Slobin
• Almost everything we know about the world comes through
language, which puts everything into categories.
• The way we categorize something will influence the way we
remember it.
• As we’re told about something, we build up mental images
and memories.
• We use these categories for reasoning.
• Our categories are going to have all kinds of ripple effects.
• People in a variety of cultures and subcultures use
language to categorize things differently.
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A thought experiment
Imagine that Congress, the president, and the courts
decide imperialism and colonialism need to be rectified.
In this scenario, they give much of the U.S. is given back to
Mexico
As a result:
Spanish becomes the dominant language
You have to call your teacher on the phone
How will you address her/him when you say ‘you’?
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The Spanish language forces you to make this distinction (tu’ or usted)
These obligatory distinctions in language force you to make cognitive and social
distinctions.
Another example:
In Japan there are at least 25 ways of raising or lowering yourself to the person you’re
speaking with. (obligatory categories)
The Spanish and Japanese examples indicate that the language effect on cognition
and behavior is more than banal or trivial. Spanish speakers and Japanese speakers
must think about prestige and difference whenever they talk to someone because of
the rules of their language.
An example from history
Since the 1600’s physicists in England/Europe looked for ways to describe natural
phenomenon. One of the phenomenon they worked to understand and describe was
heat. For a few hundred years they looked for a heat substance.
•
What is heat?
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•
They weighed hot and cold things
•
They decided that heat was an invisible caloric fluid.
•
Radiant heat was presumed to be caloric particles flying through space.
(Now the caloric theory is an obsolete scientific theory. It was believed that heat consists of a
fluid called caloric that flows from hotter to colder bodies.)
In the 1790s a man called Count Rumford changed scientific understanding of heat
-
He was visiting a canon boring factory
-
As the canons were bored they got really hot
-
Where did the heat come from?
-
Rumford said that anything that can continue to be furnished without limitation
cannot be a material substance
-
Heat must be motion
Heat is now understood as motion.
Because of Rumford’s observations, heat
becomes a verb rather than a noun.
•
Western physicists were basically misled
because their language habits
predisposed them to think of heat as a
thing (noun)
•
It took a tremendous insight to break
that language habit in order to rethink
heat as a phemonenon (verb)
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Whorf never said language was a ‘trap’. Humans can change their linguistic
descriptions and categories with new insight and information.
Next, listen to Dr. Lera Boroditsky on the NPR story link. Hers is another example of
linguistic relativity.
Dr. Lera Boroditsky, another example of relativity
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565
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